This is a very generous offer. I'd be tempted to take you up on it, except for the fact that many years ago i gave up my often feeble attempts at making music. That part of me in a sense died, and was born again as its opposite. Which meant from that day to this i been working on being and becoming the optimum consumer of or listener to the best that music has to offer.
But i have another interest in your idea. If accepted it might open the door to other possible forms of coaching without monetary fees. Obviously this would be a radical departure around here. And i for one salute the attempt.
When you first launched this songwriting counseling offer, it seemed both wise and generous. But now this thread has transcended that original notion and has turned into something much more substantial; a first class demonstration of your expertise in this area. For the right person i think this would be a tremendous opportunity; my further intuition is that both counselor and counselee would benefit from the proposed interaction, as well as possible witnesses such as myself.
In my earlier musical years when i was in rajasic (or active) mode i never progressed to the point of musical composition, that phase having ended with stunted performance of the works of others. I'm fairly well convinced of being congenitally predisposed with a markedly limited capacity for self expression. Now this may seem to be a contradiction, witness the fact that i am a bit of a wordsmith, whose style has evolved into personal essay occasionally adorned with haiku. But this is only because that limitation has to do with breadth. So once i learned that if i stay within the boundaries of my expertise, sort of like driving in my lane, there seems to be no limit on the depths i'm allowed to fathom.
Sometimes i think of this sort of thing as lining up with one's fate, (others might call it part of integral yoga); in any case it seems to be way ahead of whatever is in second place. And if you, through your good offices, can facilitate this in the lives of others it would be a blessing of the first order.
This is an interesting idea, Schalk, and a generous offer. I used to play music -- rock music when I was young, bamboo flute and other 'folk' instruments later.
While I'm not playing now, if you have the time and interest, I'd be interested in your constructive feedback on some of my band's songs (besides, um, practice more!). Here are three tunes by the band I was in as a teenager and young adult, the Dog Soldiers: Island Avenue, How Many Horses, and In Flames.
Yes, his name was Jimmy Thornton. (If you watch Slingblade, you'll see it's dedicated to him.) He was the singer and lead guitarist. I played bass guitar. I wrote several of our songs (none of the ones I shared here), but Jimmy wrote most of them. I met him while working in a hospital (he was the main cook there), and he convinced me to take up the bass guitar and form a band with him. (He was about 8 years my elder). So, I bought a bass, and he taught me to play. I was never very good, but I enjoyed making music, and we did have occasions where we seemed to "cross the line" together into some wonderful, musically induced exalted states.
Billy Bob later "covered" a couple of our songs on his album, The Edge of the World. (Island Avenue and Emily).
None of our songs ever got a fully polished studio recording. If the Dog Soldiers still existed, what would you recommend we do to improve our sound?
Schalk, thank you for your insightful, expert feedback. I think you make a good point that there are "congruence" issues with this song. On the one hand, Jimmy was a rather conflicted, self-contradictory person, so he really was simultaneously saying "I want you" and "I don't want/need anybody." If you listen to the lyrics of "In Flames" (where I think the music is more congruent with the message), you can taste the sort of conflict that he brought to relationships.
The story behind Island Avenue is that he'd fallen for a sweet, really pretty, but also well-protected/sheltered Catholic girl who lived with her parents in another state. He'd gotten frustrated with his relationships in Houston, had set his mind to just focus on work and music and return to his old routine of one-night-stands ... and here he is, wandering the streets at night, unable to get her out of his mind. So, the lyrics convey that conflict between his decision not to open to or commit to anyone, and his longing for this unattainable girl from another world.
(In the end, he actually did end up driving all the way to her house and serenading her with this song outside her bedroom window in the middle of the night, and she eventually moved down to Houston to be with him ... till pressure from the parents got to be too much to bear, and she moved back home.)
But this kind of background stuff is not what people have to work with when they hear a song, is it? It's got to be all there, in the notes and words and tempo. And in this case, the fast-paced, pop sound of Island Avenue is not fully congruent with the conflict and longing in the song, I agree. (I think this was the first "pop" song Jimmy had written; usually he wrote harder-edged rock tunes, or complex instrumental pieces.)
I wish I had some more recent music of mine to share with you (8 years old, instead of 20+ years old), since that would be closer to my current musical sensibilities. I had a little band in Virginia that recorded mostly accoustic, world-music-influenced folk/pop songs with spiritual themes, but I've lost almost all of our recordings.
Anyway, I think you have a fine sensibility for songcraft, and for writing fiction as well. I'd like to hear some of your music someday.
Mind you, I actually set out to try and compose in an integral or integrated format. I used to tour throughout the Southwest US as that is where I grew up. The landscape inspired my music as well as my two dimensional art.
Wow! You have a wonderful ear and a great gift of aural discernment. A rare thing to be sure. Hence why I haven't composed a thing since 2004. I am the stereotypical frustrated and dissatisfied artist.
I must say that right away I can gleen in an instant what you were having troubles with the Passion Flute piece. There are some textures there that are incongruent. I was trying to see if I could do something in audible form that is often recommended in two dimensional art. For instance, often in painting you will have colors that pop out but still have various gradients and shades of the same said color. To bring out the color in question a common technique used is to shade with it's opposite on the color wheel. I was trying something analygous to this in Passion Flute. Enriching smooth textures with crunchy ones. A bit overboard maybe. All of those harsh voices in the background are me tracked multiple times with lots of pitch shifts making tempo-oriented gutteral sounds and phonetics ala Adam Plack a.k.a. Nomad. You might also be refering to the didjeridoo stringing the voices together. Hard to say.
As far as my inspiration for my compositions, they have a foundation in common: the Desert Southwest. My heart is enamored with it and is anchored quite deeply I'm afraid. However, I was still trying to express an Integral aspect or aspects to my composing by using instruments from all over the globe in one piece: bringing a vast array of instrumental voices together to share a common musical canvas and theme. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it came out sounding forced and labored, all of it inspired though.
Some day I may compose again but not for another 6 - 7 years minimum. My teenaged daughters resent my music and the time it takes to create it. If they never hear another note from Daddy again it would be too soon. Oh well. What can one do? Meditate!
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Posted May 13th, 2009 by Charles Bowling